Stalla
Posts: 520
Joined: 1/12/2005
From: London
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This was such a let down, purely because I expected a masterpiece (Empire 4 stars and Academy award). It lacked any sort of subtlety in the storytelling to the point where a lot of it was almost unrealistic. If they'd approached the racial prejudices with a bit more subtlety, the ending of each story arc would've felt so much more important...instead we have Ryan Phillippe's character, who's behaviour throughout the film is just not explained whatsoever...
SPOILER
...if his racial prejudice was enough to expect the kid to pull out a gun, then why the hell was he picking the kid up in the middle of the night in L.A.?
END OF SPOILER
And in general, it wasn't just that part of his character, His character just didn't seem consistent throughout the movie, particularly since a lot of the action took place within 48 hours. I think the idea of so many story arcs on the subject just didn't work because a lot of what happened to some of the characters would've made more sense if there was more character developement...something you just can't do with a large ensemble cast. On the subtlety issue, it just seemed like EVERYONE was racist, EVERY situation they got into was race motivated or others thought it was race motivated, I mean, it got to the point where, half way into the movie, when they suddenly introduce another new blatantly racist character, I actually rolled my eyes in disbelief! The reason this film is still worth 3 marks for me despite this is that the acting was just so well done and the film was so beautifully shot. Beyond that, a complete let down.
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